change

Poetry·Clark Liu, age 9 — A child captures autumn's arrival through sound patterns, describing wool sweaters, breezy sneezes, chattering trees, and red leaves flooding streets like a stream.

Poetry·Ava Luangkesorn — Birds endure a devastating storm that transforms their peaceful sea home, then witness the rainbow and crystalline water that follow.

Poetry·Lindsay Gale — Three distinct portraits of rain capture its varied moods: mystical mist, violent tempest, and bleak drizzle, each rendered through precise sensory language.

Poetry·Katja Muckle Eizenberg — A sunflower narrates its life cycle from bloom to seed dispersal, watching its seeds fly away to freedom before entering winter's sleep.

Personal Narrative·Micki Mermelstein, age 11 — Alone at her family's Country House, once filled with cousins' laughter, an 11-year-old reflects on how growing up has emptied the summer gathering place of its magic.

Poetry·Saketh Lingisetty — A vacuum becomes a metaphor for life's unpredictable forces, pulling us toward unexpected paths while dandelions spread their seeds against the current.

Poetry·Celia Chen — A speaker anxiously checks for signs of spring's arrival, moving from uncertainty to joyful confirmation as frost melts and soil awakens.

Poetry·Xi Huang — Fragmented observations from a desk window capture April's blooming world through colors, birds, and flowers in stream-of-consciousness style.

Story·Roy Zha — A raindrop named Roy falls from his cloud home, lands on grass, evaporates back to the sky, and discovers the water cycle is an endless, scary adventure.

Poetry·Shivanshi Dutt — A girl reflects on her name change from Anusha to Shivanshi in preschool, and the various nicknames that mark different relationships in her life.